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Armor protection was specifically addressed for the Germans managed weaponry that could now pierce the outlying armor plate of the Mk Is and Mk IIs. The Tank Mk IV was intended as a much-improved version of the original Tank Mk I. As with the Tank Mk II, there were 50 Tank Mk IIIs produced. Reserved for training from the start, the Tank Mk III series never saw combat in The Great War and since development of the Tank Mk IV slow in coming, the Tank Mark IIIs were slow themselves to appear in a finalized form. The Tank Mk II shared much with the Tank Mk I to which the "Tank Mk III" was devised as a another more advanced trainer intended to share features of the upcoming "Tank Mark IV" series. As in the Tank Mk I before it, "male" variants were the cannon-armed marks while "female" variants were machine gun-armed marks intended to protect the males on their approach. The "Tank Mk II" was developed from the Tank Mk I was a crew trainer yet even these were pressed into service, some 50 examples being completed and shipped to France. Within time, the Germans developed wider trenches, anti-tank ditches, strategically placed artillery and minefields, an anti-tank rifle and armor-piercing machine gun ammunition to stop these steel beasts in their tracks. Its initial use came as a nasty shock to the Germans which allowed the British to gain territory on their historical enemy through psychology alone.
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Conversely, the vehicle was armed with a pair of cannon, led her crew in relatively safety from small arms fire and could cross trenches of approximately 9 feet across. The type brought about limited success for it was prone to breakdowns, vulnerable to artillery fire and managed a snail's pace of roughly 3 to 4 miles per hour - and the latter only on ideal surfaces. Development of the prototype "Little Willie" tracked armored vehicle gave way to the production level Tank Mk I ("Big Willie") to which 150 of the type were produced and used in the first recorded tank actions of World War 1 in September of 1916. It was the British Navy - under Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty - that pushed the "tank" into existence (then known as "landships").
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